Long-range radio communications solution in development with Perspecta Labs
NewsApril 23, 2021
CHANTILLY, Va. Perspecta Inc. announced that its applied research arm, Perspecta Labs, received a prime award for work on low-cost, resilient tactical radio communications under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Resilient Networked Distributed Mosaic Communications (RN DMC) program. The contract has a potential total value of $18.5 million over a 45-month period of performance if all options are exercised.
According to officials, the RN DMC program aims to deliver resilient, long-range tactical communications via self-forming, self-healing "mosaic" antennas made up of small, low power and cost transceiver elements that are desinged to be hard-carried by warfighters and hosted on ground vehicles, high-altitude platforms, and satellites.
The company claims that Perspecta Labs will prototype, implement, test, and validate an adaptive distributed array system solution that works with existing tactical radios and unmodified tactical waveforms.
Perspecta Labs' solution uses wideband distributed spatial processing and a novel mechanism for joint signal processing and networking intended to meet high-performance requirements at low size, weight, power, and cost. Experimental validation will progress from the laboratory to a long-range ground-to-air link and relay field exercises, which demonstrate communication over challenging links that are not supportable using conventional tactical radio technology.
